The Wordless Mystery
by One-Soul-Joy18
Summary: A very sad ficlet about a girl with red hair and her relationship with a boy who couldn't sit still, during a war that wouldn't let him. VERY SAD, but my favorite yet. R&R please


Disclaimer: I own nothing that even slightly resembles Harry Potter or his assorted characters and things. In other words, anything you seem to think you might recognize belongs to the genius herself, ms J K Rowling. Except for the song. That belongs to the Indigo Girls. Who are equally amazing, in my opinion.  
  
A/N- Yet another one shot fic. I wish I could get away from them, but they are what pop into my head. This one is a sweet, but very sad story about a girl with red hair, and her relationship with a boy who couldn't sit still, during a war that wouldn't let him. But mostly it's about realizing that some things are perfect, and even if you miss the first chance, there might be a second one. And then again... there might not. Not what you think, I'm sure. It certainly isn't what I had planned... Read and review. Please.  
  
The Wordless Mystery. By Onesouljoy18  
  
_--Each time you'd pull down the driveway   
I wasn't sure when I would see you again.   
Cause yours was a twisted blind-sided highway,   
No matter which road you took then--._  
  
Mostly, I guess, I was just waiting for him to come back to us, when this all began. I wasn't really expecting it to become such a mess. He'd show up here, at the Burrow, about halfway through the summer, and if those blighter relatives of his wouldn't let him come on his own, we'd get him here, somehow. But around fourth or fifth year (fifth or sixth for him) things started to change. He'd get up, and just pace, all worried, and upset. It was almost as if something were on his mind that he couldn't get rid of, no matter how hard he tried to think it through and whatever it was just made no sense to him. He was here, but he wasn't, and I guess I just refused to get used to that.  
I never knew when, but sometimes one of those random moments would come, and he would give me a genuine smile, and I would be caught so off guard that I would blush to match my hair. How very embarrassing that could be. That's one of those things I'm glad is in the rather distant past now. Although, in all honesty, it was one of those moments that gave me some hope for him after all. I was so afraid he'd slip away into his thoughts, and never come back to us, especially the summer after Sirius died. We were all here, but I knew he felt totally alone. Why or how I knew that is beyond me, but somehow, I just understood.  
I remember him looking at me - through me, really – and saying, "_Things aren't at all what they seem to be, Gin. They're all so much harder and longer. And in the end you still have to fight for what you love_." Then his eyes came very, very focused and he looked straight into my eyes and said, "_But in the end, the things you love are what are worth fighting for the most_." I believe my cheeks were a record color that day. And in that moment everything changed for me. Sitting there at Grimmauld Place, summer before my fifth year, listening to The Boy Who Lived say (in not so many words) that he loved me and I was worth fighting for, on the porch, I gaped at him. He smiled again, stood up and walked away, and I thought to myself: _Perhaps there is something more to Harry Potter than all this war nonsense after all. Perhaps all his brooding is just his way of hiding.  
_  
_--Oh you set up your place in my thoughts  
Moved in and made my thinking crowded.  
Now we're out in the back with the barking dogs   
My heart the red sun, your heart the moon clouded.--  
_  
After that moment I never thought of him the same way again. Not that my silly little girl crush returned...but more that he was a constant presence in my thoughts, and whenever I got a chance, I sent a positive thought his way. I don't really know what I believe about wand less magic, or deities or all other power sources, but I do know that when I would sit and think about him, it was never far behind that he would need a helping hand at something. And after our moment that summer, I was always the one who had a hand to lend.  
His sixth year was hard. Harder, even, than seventh during the war, I think. This was mostly because the war had not yet even begun and people were silently choosing sides. Friendships were tried for true, and sadly not all were found to be so. I remember weeping mercilessly when Hermione told me that Michael, my Michael, had chosen the Dark side. But that was just to be the beginning. Luna, Neville, Hermione, Ron and I all stood behind Harry like good friends should. I would have loved to say there were more of us who were there full time. There weren't. I think it was that fact that broke his heart, in the end. Obviously all of the teachers were for our side, and Lupin did return to the DADA position in my fifth year (bloody good professor, I still say one of the best I ever had... but anyways) but it was hard for Harry, still, knowing that there were some choosing not to believe in him, and his Cause.  
We sat, one night during a Hogsmead weekend, out by the lake. It was odd, we'd reflected, how after all these years we'd known each other, it was just now that we were becoming friends. _Near the end_, he'd said. He was being so morbid that I had to laugh it off and tell him not to be depressing. But that's how we all thought those days. "_How long until this day is my last?_" or I remember saying to Professor Trelawney one day during divination, "_You know, it'd be almost tactful if you'd STOP predicting Harry's death. It's not like we all don't think about it on a fairly regular basis anyways. Predict something HAPPY. Unless you can't because you are incapable of being a real person and understanding others' emotions_." Needless to say, we were all reasonably tense that year. And yet the War had not even begun.  
  
_--So what is love then? Is it dictated or Chosen?   
Does it sing like the hymns of a thousand years?   
Or is it just Pop Emotion?  
And if it ever was there and then left-   
Does that mean it was never true?   
And to exist it must elude.   
Is that why I think these things of you?--_  
  
I don't know when it was during that fateful summer that I realized I was hopelessly, mercilessly, completely in love with Harry Potter. Hermione told me her experience with Ron was "_like someone had snuck up behind me, thrown me to the floor, and tickled me, right in front of all my friends, just to embarrass me_." I'd have to say that for me it was far more subtle.  
I remember sitting there, on our porch swing in the backyard facing the river, and thinking about all the tension. I was amazed that we were even allowed to be at the Burrow that summer. _Surely_, I had thought, _we will be returning to Grimmauld Place. There's no way Dumbledore will allow us to stay at the Burrow. It's too dangerous_. But I was wrong. Since no place was safe during this time, the Burrow was as good a place to be as any. Especially if Harry was with us, considering the Burrow held what precious few good memories he had to his name.  
Harry, as if on cue by my thoughts, walked down into the backyard then. He sat on the bank of the river, and pulled his knees to his chin. I watched for a moment, as he wrapped his arms around his knees, and tucked his head into his arms. His shoulders began to shake, and I knew he was crying. My heart began to break, and before I knew it, I was weeping as well. He turned around at the sound of my sniffling, and came to sit next to me on the swing. He gathered me in his arms, and I held on for dear life as we wept together. I remember now, only a year and a half later, how young we seemed just at that moment. We were but children, screaming out in the darkness for a light that would never come. Now I know better than to scream. It's so much more practical to allow the darkness to sweep you away...  
In later days, during the War, Harry could often be caught humming the chorus to a Muggle song he said reminded him of that night that summer. "_I could go crazy on a night like tonight, when summer's beginning to give up her fight. And every thought's a possibility. The voices are heard, but nothing is seen. Why do you spend this time with me may be an equal mystery._" It was a sweet time when I would hear him sing that, and know he was thinking of me. It was enough then, just to know without ever saying it, that we loved each other. Now I wish I had said something. Did he ever know? I wonder sometimes.  
  
_--But you like the taste of Danger   
It shines like sugar on your lips.   
And you like to stand in the line of fire   
Just to show you can shoot straight from your hip.   
There must be a thousand things you would die for   
But I can hardly think of two.   
But not everything is better spoken aloud.   
Not when I'm talking to you.--  
_  
Then, suddenly, as if we hadn't been expecting it for the last three years, the War broke out. It was December of his seventh year. It was month one of my broken heart. Constant meetings of the Order, which was growing steadily. Unfortunately, constant meetings of Death Eaters, too. More often than not I was alone- too young to be a member, too old not to know what was going on. So Hermione, Ron, and my precious Harry would come out of a Meeting and tell me everything that had happened, and I would be strong to give them a chance to show that they were afraid. We all were.  
Dumbledore was the first to die for the Order. Get rid of the head of the body, and the rest falls apart. I guess that was the Dark Lord's plan. He always was a fool. Bloody ass almost died four times. You think he'd have gotten a clue that Dumbledore wasn't our head. Unfortunately, that didn't make losing him any easier. The school was a mess for a while, until McGonagall overtook the Headmistress position. She's still there, the old cat. A wonderful woman, really, once you get past the Transfiguration room. But Harry took the loss of Dumbledore the worst. His grandfather, as Harry found out the night Dumbledore died. James Potter's father was Dumbledore. It was an amazing thing to think that Harry had had family all that time, and never known it. This loss only fueled Harry's "saving people thing" as Ron liked to call it. He was now fuller of vengeance than he had ever been before, and knew, I think, that He was going to die. It was at that time that I think he stopped caring about living, and started caring only about killing the Dark Lord.  
I remember watching him then, acting out as if nothing could kill him. He'd act rashly, but that was the only way to act then. Give no mercy, and take no prisoners. I'd never seen so many dead bodies in one place before. It was "torture for information, then kill" and that was the only way it could have been. Keeping a Death Eater alive was like asking for your own head on a silver platter. I was the one who killed Michael Corner.  
  
I don't think anyone was the same person during that War as they were before it. I know that no one was the same after it. But the way that people changed was astounding. Snape, dear lord, was almost human during the War. It was as if he'd been waiting his whole life for this, like War was where he thrived. And I suppose, as I think about it now, it was. He died protecting Harry. I think that's what allowed him to have some form of peace- knowing he'd done something right for once. And that he'd left a Potter indebted to him. He always was a snarky bastard. By the time the War ended, and Voldemort was dead, no one could find Harry. No one was the same after they did.  
  
_--Oh the Pirate gets the ship and the girl tonight.   
Breaks a bottle to Christen her.   
Basking in the exploits of her thief,   
She's a very good listener.--  
_  
I don't remember dying. What I remember most is Harry sitting over me, saying nothing, just crying. And I remember wishing I had been able to speak. My heart belonged to him, and I just wanted to tell him. To scream, "I love you with all my heart." But I know now...I know to just let the darkness swallow you. Some things are better not spoken aloud.  
Some will say that I died by a Death Eater's hand. I know that I died of a broken heart. Physically I was bleeding internally, and there was no hope left for me. But that was not what killed me. What killed me was when Harry laid down next to me, and wrapped me in his arms. And even that's not true. My true death was when he started humming... "_I could go crazy on a night like tonight, when summer's beginning to give up her fight. And every thought's a possibility. The voices are heard, but nothing is seen. Why do you spend this time with me may be an equal mystery._" But at that time, that was what I needed. I just needed to know, to remember. I knew that he would love me just as I had loved him. I don't know that he will ever forget me. And I know that I will never forget him. My love for him carried on, even to now. Here, wherever I am. It must be Heaven, though, because the one clear memory I am left with is his smile.  
Sometimes he would catch me so off guard with that smile, and I would turn as red as my hair. I wish those days were not so long ago. He is with me now, here, and I suppose and hope that I am with him there. How bittersweet and ironic that I should die and he should live. He was the one with everything to die for. I suppose they overlooked me again, not realizing that I had something to die for, too. Him. And I did die for him, and it was a beautiful end to my short, wonderful years.  
Some day I believe his time will come, and he will be here with me. Until then I will remember his smile. And I will remember our wordless love. But mostly I will remember how our love needed no words.  
  
Maybe that's all we need- to meet in the middle of impossibility. We're standing at opposite poles, equal partners in a mystery, Standing at opposite poles, equal partners in a mystery.  
  
Our love: The Wordless Mystery  
  
-Fin-


End file.
